Gianni Infantino's Presidency at Risk Amid Global Backlash

Gianni Infantino’s summer as “King of Football” has not lasted long.

Less than a fortnight ago, he sat alongside US President Donald Trump in a luxury suite at MetLife Stadium, watching Spain and Argentina contest a World Cup final that FIFA trumpeted as its biggest, richest and most successful tournament in history. There were boos when the pair walked across the turf to hand over medals and the trophy, but the bigger picture was clear: 104 matches played, record revenues banked, and Infantino seemingly cruising toward another unopposed re-election next March.

That coronation now looks anything but guaranteed.

The mood has flipped with stunning speed. In the space of a few days, the 56-year-old has gone from untouchable power broker to a president fighting for his political life, engulfed by a backlash of rare scale and unity in the modern game.

The plan that blew up

The trigger was Infantino’s most audacious move yet: an attempt to invite private investors into the heart of FIFA’s money machine.

The proposal was to spin off FIFA’s commercial engine into a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE). This vehicle would control the organisation’s most lucrative assets – the World Cup and other tournaments, broadcasting and sponsorship rights, tickets and hospitality. In essence, everything that turns football’s global showpiece into a financial giant.

FIFA sought to raise $4.2bn by selling around 20 percent of FFE, on an equity valuation of $20bn. The “anchor investor” was lined up: Thrive Eternal, a fund launched by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Private equity and sovereign wealth money have long been part of the European club landscape. Infantino wanted to drag the World Cup into that world.

The pitch to FIFA’s 211 member federations was simple and seductive: cash. Each association was offered $20m if it signed up by September 19. That sat on top of the $10m already due to each federation over the next four years, largely funded by FIFA’s record $15bn revenue from the 2023-26 cycle and the World Cup that has just finished.

Under FFE, FIFA said, those distributions would double to $20m per federation and then keep climbing – $22m each through 2034, $24m through 2038. For small associations in places such as Andorra, Montserrat or Papua New Guinea, that kind of money can transform entire football ecosystems. For the likes of England, Spain or France, with established commercial power, the calculus is different.

Infantino left New York last week boasting letters of support from about 200 federations for his re-election bid. On paper, he still owned world football.

Within days, that paper power looked hollow.

Global revolt

The reaction to the FFE plan was not just critical. It was almost universal.

Some FIFA vice presidents opposed it. Senior executives pushed back. All European football federations lined up against it. The confederations of Asia and North America joined the resistance. Britain’s prime minister weighed in. The global leagues’ association voiced alarm. Fans around the world saw a line being crossed.

Essentially, everyone.

The fear ran deeper than a simple debate over money. To many, selling a slice of future World Cup profits to private investors felt like an attempt to monetise the last remaining sacred space in the sport. The World Cup is supposed to be about glory, national pride, shared memory. Not a long-term revenue stream for funds that will demand growth, more matches and bigger formats.

European clubs and leagues saw a direct threat. If investors came in, they would push for more content – expanded tournaments, extra competitions, bloated calendars. That would squeeze club seasons, undermine domestic leagues, and compete with the Champions League for attention and money. Fixture lists are already jammed. Elite players are at breaking point. Broadcasters and sponsors do not have infinite budgets.

The tension burst into the open on Thursday when UEFA, European football’s governing body, made its most aggressive move in years: it pledged to boycott all FIFA competitions unless Infantino dropped the plan. This was not a vague warning. It was a direct challenge to the man at the top.

Europe’s teams dominate FIFA’s flagship events. The men’s World Cup, the Club World Cup – these trophies, and the European presence in them, drive much of FIFA’s revenue. A UEFA-led walkout would have ripped the commercial heart out of the organisation.

Inside FIFA, the rebellion turned personal. Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino’s senior adviser and a former Goldman Sachs banker, resigned and publicly branded the project a bad deal. Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer, issued a sharply worded statement defending staff and implicitly criticising his boss, a move that in most organisations would be career-ending insubordination – or the prelude to a leadership change.

Infantino suddenly looked isolated.

Climbdown from the top

On Friday, the pressure told. The FIFA president announced that he was abandoning the investment plan.

“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” he said in a statement.

The words were careful, but the reality was brutal. The man who has built his presidency on pushing through big, controversial ideas – from expanded World Cups to reworked club competitions – had been forced into a rare and public retreat.

The climbdown did not immediately repair the damage. If anything, it raised a sharper question: after this, does Infantino still have the authority to lead?

The resentment is not just about the plan itself. Many within the game are furious at the way it was developed – in relative secrecy, with minimal consultation, while Infantino spent much of the past year in Trump’s orbit. Even Trump, he said on Friday, had not discussed the plan to sell stakes in FIFA tournaments with the FIFA president.

Trust, already fragile in some quarters, has eroded further.

Who backed him – and who might move next

Infantino’s traditional power base lies outside Europe. Africa, with its 54 votes, has long been the foundation of his majority. This time, though, even some of his allies hesitated. Many African federations stood neutral in public, weighing the promise of “game-changing” money against the political and sporting risks.

South America’s CONMEBOL, the 10-nation confederation led by FIFA vice president Alejandro Dominguez, struck a cautious note on Friday. It confirmed it had received the proposal and would study it “with the rigour it demands”. Dominguez has his own stake in Infantino’s future: he is counting on the FIFA president to expand the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams, which would increase the number of matches allocated to minority co-hosts Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. At present, those three are due just one game each of the 104, with the rest staged in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

The politics are layered and ruthless. Infantino was re-elected unopposed in 2019 in Paris and again in 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda. FIFA’s statutes allow him one more four-year term, taking him to 2031. The FFE spin-off, critics argue, looked like a vehicle to extend his influence beyond that date – a commissioner-style role at the helm of the sport’s commercial arm, with a salary comfortably above his current package of more than $6m a year.

That idea now lies in ruins. But the question of succession no longer feels hypothetical.

It would take 106 votes to secure a majority in a contested election. No continent votes as a perfect bloc, but the numbers are stark. If most of Europe’s 55 associations, CONCACAF’s 35 in North and Central America and the Caribbean, and Asia’s 46 were to align behind a challenger, Infantino’s grip would loosen quickly.

Names already swirl in the corridors and WhatsApp groups of football politics. Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari president of Paris Saint-Germain and a key player in European broadcasting, is frequently mentioned. Victor Montagliani, the Canadian FIFA vice president and CONCACAF president, is another. Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain, the long-time AFC president who narrowly lost the 2016 FIFA election to Infantino, could decide this is his moment to try again.

Until this week, such talk felt distant, almost fanciful. Infantino’s control of the FIFA machinery, his alliance-building across Africa and Asia, and the sheer financial muscle of the World Cup revenue stream made a challenge seem futile.

Not anymore.

A presidency on the line

The calendar is unforgiving. November 18 is the deadline for candidates to enter the presidential race. The vote takes place on March 19 in Rabat, Morocco, where FIFA houses its African headquarters.

Infantino still has time to regroup, rebuild alliances and argue that shelving the FFE project shows he can listen and adapt. He can point to record revenues, expanded development funds, and a World Cup that delivered on the pitch and in the balance sheet.

But the core issue now is credibility. After the interventions from Lamour and Cordeiro, after the threat of a UEFA boycott, after a global backlash that cut across confederations and politics, can he convincingly present himself as the guardian of football’s interests rather than the architect of its sell-off?

For years, many inside the game have muttered privately about Infantino’s style – centralised power, limited consultation, a taste for grand schemes that stretch the sport’s calendar and traditions. Those concerns stayed largely in the shadows while the money flowed and the trophies glittered.

This week, they burst into the light.

The World Cup in New York was meant to be the crowning moment of Infantino’s reign, proof that his vision – bigger tournaments, bigger deals, bigger numbers – had paid off. Instead, the aftermath has exposed the limits of his authority and the depth of resistance to his most radical ideas.

The sell-off has been stopped. The question now is whether that victory will satisfy his opponents, or simply embolden them to go after something bigger: his job.